Bare Soles
by GrowlingTurtlez
Summary: A changed Duo finally contacts Quatre 4 years after the war, and Q. finds himself fascinated, in a bizarre way, with this man he used to know.


Author: GrowlingTurtlez

Title: Bare Soles

Pairing: 2x4, implied 3x5

Rating: PG

Summary: This fic was written for PrettykittyAya, for the GW Yaoi/Yuri Wedding Ficathon. Disappearing after the war, Duo finally contacts Quatre 4 years later.

Would you believe I fell in love with his feet first?

It seems odd now, that after all the time during the war where his beauty, grit, and brilliance showed through, it would be the sight of his bare feet that would do me in.

We lost him after the war, in the time after the end of the fighting and before people started trying to forget. Once the brouhaha, the cameras, parties and oh-so heartfelt 'thank you's died down, Duo had disappeared. We searched for a while, of course, but none of us were too stupid to realize that if a master of stealth didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be. And so we waited for him to resurface, and as we waited a year passed. In the meantime Wufei went back to school, determined to be the scholar he was never allowed to be. Trowa, even though we all thought he would go back to the circus, soon joined him. They seem happy, when I talk to them.

Another year passed. Heero joined the Preventors, only to quit four months later and become a programmer. He later told me it was because he couldn't stand the smell of gunpowder anymore. Duo did not resurface. In the year that followed I continued to sink into my father's business, and slowly but surely it became my own. And I just…was. We got together every now and then, the four of us, but no matter how much fun we had that fact that there should have been five was never too far from our minds. But it was after one of these get-togethers that Duo contacted us. Well, not us.

He contacted _me_.

"Mr. Winner, there's a private call for you on line 2."

"Who is it?"

"A Mr. Duo Maxwell, sir."

I nearly knocked the cradle off my desk in my rush to answer the phone. I slammed it to my ear, breath coming a little too fast and shallow.

"Yes! Yes? Are you there? Duo?"

A soft, low laugh was my only reply. Then a deep voice, shockingly deeper than I remembered answered.

"Yes, Quatre, it's me."

I couldn't speak. There were so many words fighting to fly off my tongue that the only thing that came out was an embarrassing squeak. Kind of like someone was raping a squirrel.

"You want to come to my place? Then we can talk."

"Uh, yes! I mean, of course, yes."

Again came that caressing, low laugh, and after getting his address we hung up. I stared at my own hand resting on the phone, still in shock. It felt uncomfortably slick with my own sweat, so I let go, glancing down at Duo's address. He'd been living right under my nose! Surely I would have seen him walking around? He wasn't that hard to miss, or at least, he hadn't been. Had he really changed that much?

I rang his doorbell, hearing it echo throughout the apartment inside. The building itself was small and clean, its proximity to my own office remarkable, and a little irritating. To think that in the years we spent waiting for him to show up, I could have driven for 20 minutes and found him! I wondered why I hadn't seen him around, with that thigh-length hair, and those eyes. I heard his steps as he headed towards the door.

"Hold on!" he called out, and then the door opened.

No wonder I had never noticed him around.

I couldn't move, frozen on the threshold of his apartment. The years had left their mark on Duo, and I was forced to realize how much a person can change in that time. I wondered what I looked like to him.

He stood there smiling, a soft, real smile that seemed as at home on his face as a fish in water. And even though we were both only about twenty, the skin at the corners of his eyes was starting to wrinkle. I guess that goes with too much laughing, real or not. The second thing I noticed was his hair, or rather, his lack of it. It was cut up to his chin, falling in shaggy layers around his jaw. However shocking that was, it wasn't what impacted me most. My gaze traveled down, past shoulders that had grown broader, his slim legs encased in a pair of well-worn jeans, and onward to his feet. He had no shoes on. Not even socks. Just his bare, pink feet, peeking out slyly from underneath the frayed hems of his jeans. I peeked back at them.

Realizing I was staring and probably looked like an idiot, I jerked my eyes back up to his face. The smile had become a grin, and the first thing he said to me was,

"I'm shorter than you now."

Well yes, in fact he was, by several inches. And I still couldn't say anything. With that low laugh that slid from his throat like silk in water, he grabbed my hand and dragged me inside.

His apartment was small, tidy, and filled with the oddly pleasant murmuring and gurgling sound of water. The source of the sound was easy to understand with a quick glance around. The apartment was crammed wall to wall with fish tanks. Any available space had been packed with a glass container; from the small bowls of hardy Betas to the elaborate set-ups for exotic salt waters. They cast an eerie blue glow on the wooden, rough-hewn furniture. The light fall of his feet alerted me to his approach, and then he was standing before me with a cup of what looked suspiciously like tea steaming in his hand.

"Is that…"

"Earl Grey? Yeah. I went shopping. You still drink this kind, right?" he asked.

"Yes! Thank you."

I took it from him, noticing at the same time a drawing of a stressed out looking pig on the side. The caption read, "I can't die yet! I still have damage to do!"

I looked back up-or should I say down?- at his feet as he walked back into the kitchen. I don't have a foot fetish or anything, it's just that I'd hardly ever seen anybody's bare feet, except for my own of course, so blatantly displayed.

Back when I was still the spoiled, irritable heir of the Winner household, no one ever walked around in their bare feet. They were always clad in an endless progression of silky house slippers, Birkenstocks, high-end business pumps, back-killing high heels, and in the case of the groundskeepers, durable, no-nonsense shit kickers. To touch those expensive carpets with a bare foot was almost unthinkable. Even my litter of sisters always had baby booties on when they were young. Seeing Duo's bare feet parade around on the living room carpet and cool kitchen tiles was somehow thrilling, even a little scandalous. I couldn't stop staring, or even stop the sharp bite of disappointment when he slid them under the coffee table as he sat on the couch. I slowly walked around the room, staring into the various tanks, not ready to face him yet. One fish in particular caught my eye. It looked more like a school-grader's drawing of a fish than one that could possibly exist in the ocean.

"What kind of fish is this?" I asked, taking a sip of my tea.

"A Slippery Dick"

The fish fled in a panic to the back of the tank, piling inside plastic skulls and castles as a mouthful of Earl Grey sprayed all over the glass. When I turned around to look at him, nose burning and eyes watering, he was still giggling hysterically, clutching his stomach. Giving up on the fish as a topic of conversation, I sat across from him. He silently handed me a tissue before remarking,

"You haven't said much."

"Neither have you. You used to talk a lot more."

"…yeah, well. Haven't really talked to anyone in a long time. Guess I fell out of the habit."

I said nothing, letting the murmuring of the fish tanks calm me before trying to speak again. He didn't say anything, just watched me struggle with the words. Finally his silence and soft smile were all the encouragement I needed for the questions to come spilling out.

"Duo, where did you go? Have you been living here long? I can't believe you live so close to me, and I never knew! I mean, I thought I would have noticed your braid, but you…why did you cu-"

I was cut off by an explosion of wild laughter from across the table. He head was thrown back, hair swishing around his cheeks, Adam's apple bobbing up and down. I blushed, and he started talking again between little guffaws.

"All right, all right," he managed to gasp out with little 'I give, I give' gestures of his hands.

"After the war, I traveled a lot, trying to get my bearings straight. It was hard to adjust to all this…peace."

By the time that word escaped his mouth his laughter had died, a solemn expression that I had never seen before on his face.

"I was trying to lay old ghosts to rest…"

This came out as a whisper, and after that the silence returned. The only noise was the ticking of the clock on the wall, the ceaseless whispering of all the tanks. It was so surreal all the sudden, to be sitting in that small apartment, surrounded by a riot of colorful fish; sitting across the table from a stranger wearing the skin of a boy I once knew. I couldn't reconcile the image of the wartime, devil-may-care Duo with the one sitting before me. The old Duo was never one to let silences last long. The old Duo spoke loudly, gestured widely, and moved through his territory like a shark on the hunt.

The old Duo was gone.

His place had been taken by a barefoot, shaggy-haired enigma. My skin practically itched with the desire to ask all the questions I needed to ask, but a lot happens in four years, too much to learn in one night. And so I would wait. I was almost reassured by the lack of information exchanged. It meant there would be other days to share what had happened in the past four years.

"You want to watch a movie?"

I started at the interruption of my thoughts. There was that gentle smile again, his fingers lightly tapping the table top.

"Sure."

Ten minutes later found me ensconced next to him on the couch, his jeans pressing against my slacks. The movie we were watching was an old one, really bizarre, and fit the mood perfectly. I don't remember much of it, however, other than a guy in a giant rabbit suit and something about time travel. I was too busy staring at Duo's feet. They were propped up on the coffee table, bare as you please. Feet are not very pretty body parts. I can understand why we hide them a lot of the time. But his weren't ugly; they were…Duo, if that makes any sense. I had never seen them before, but somehow they were the only parts of him that I still recognized. His heels were callused, and I caught sight of the odd scar or two. His toes wiggled happily with the movie's soundtrack, the balls of his feet swaying back and forth. Each time I gathered up the nerve to sneak a peek at his face, there was that same enigmatic smile, and a few times he was peeking right back. I wondered what he was thinking.

As he led me to the door later on, I stopped on the threshold, hand on the doorframe, turning to him.

"Can we meet again soon?" Well someone slap me if that didn't sound desperate and stupid. He lazily tilted his head to the side, eyes barely glimpsed through his hair.

"Of course, Quatre.I wouldn't have contacted you if I planned on disappearing."

My shoulders sagged with relief.

"Just one thing, though," he said, leaning towards me. I could feel his breath on my skin, and my heart started beating triple time.

"Don't tell the others yet."

There was no need to ask who, or what, but I was dying to know why.

"O-okay," I managed to stammer. What was wrong with me? I could survive any social gathering with finesse and ease, the training instilled in me since birth, but in one evening with an old…friend, I was reduced to stammering and one syllable answers. I stumbled my way through parting niceties that were completely inappropriate and awkward for this situation, and all the while Duo just chuckled and guided me out the door. Before he shut it completely I blurted out,

"Wait! You will call me when you want to…" what? 'hang'? That was lame. "….when you want to-" He seemed to understand.

"Yeah. Don't worry. I think anymore tonight would be useless. We're too shell-shocked and mumble-fucked right now to say anything. I'll call you soon, I promise."

'Mumble-fucked'? What? But before I could say anything else the door shut, and I was alone once again.

He contacted me again a week later. That week I'm sure I drove everyone crazy with my frazzled nerves. I was so caught up between waiting for Duo to call, wanting him to call, wondering if he _would_ call, and daydreaming about his toes that I couldn't tell which end was up. And so, when he finally contacted me I was up and out of my seat like a bat out of hell. That day we went to the park and had lunch. He nearly drove me crazy when he took off his shoes, socks, and walked around on the grass and random patches of dirt. I wondered what it felt like.

"What are you doing now? For work, I mean," I asked.

"Well, I started out as a mechanic, did that for a while. But after a year I quit, traveled around. I got tired of that before too long though, and so for the past two years I've been studying for a degree in engineering at the University."

"Oh…wait, studying for a degree in engineering? Why would you even need to-"

"Study for that?" he answered with a wry smile, glancing at me. "Well, I can't really walk into an interview and say, 'Well yes, I have absolutely no official credentials, but during the war I blew up a lot of shit and put it back together again, so I know what I'm doing.'"

We walked together in silence for a while. I glanced at him occasionally, catching him finger the ends of his shorn hair.

"Duo, why did you contact me? Why don't you want the others to know yet?"

He sighed heavily before sitting down on the grass, tearing at the individual blades with his fingers, not looking at me.

"Quatre, I know I've changed a lot. I had to. And I'm not…ready to face them yet. But you…"

He lifted his face to mine, patting the grass beside him. I sat down, braving the grass stains.

"I've always felt the most comfortable around you, Quatre. You see things for how they are, but you only say what's appropriate. That irritated me at first, until I learned to read your eyes and ignore your mouth," he said.

I flushed hotly, not looking at him. Well, his face at least.

"I'll talk to the others when I'm ready." And with that the subject was closed. I didn't want to pester him with another question, but I couldn't help it.

"Why do you have so many fish?"

He laughed before answering.

"It all goes back to water, I guess. I didn't see much on L2, and it was outrageously expensive to get fish. In fact, I'd never seen them living, in the water, before I came to Earth. It amazed me, ya know? The thought of an animal, living in all that water, surrounded by it, and still being OK, that blew my mind! So I surrounded myself with them."

Silence again.

"Is there really a fish called the Slippery Dick?"

His laughter filled the air, and the day passed.

In the following weeks we met up a lot. And if I always chose places where he could take off his shoes, well, that's not too sad.

Is it?

I thought that the old Duo was gone. But that wasn't exactly true. Here and there I could see signs of him. It showed when he laughed without restraint, in his quirky choice of music and movies. It showed in his intelligence, in the way he seemed to love seeing me flustered and floundering. He still walked like he was hunting something. I discovered other things too, like how he'll stroke the tips of his shorn hair when he's deep in thought, how he uses old jelly jars as drinking glasses, and wears shoes as little as humanly possible.

I finally managed to invite him to my place after two months. I had been over his often enough that it really shouldn't have made a difference. But somehow, bringing him there did.

He stood right inside the doorway to my apartment, studying it quietly. After a moment he moved to walk further inside, but stopped when I said,

"You can take off your shoes and socks if you want," and as hard as I tried I couldn't keep the note of yearning out of my voice. He quirked an eyebrow, and slowly smiled, watching my face as he leaned down and slipped them off. I shivered low in my gut when he first buried his toes into the yielding fibers of my carpet.

After that I don't remember the night as a whole, just a series of images and sensations. Like when we were sitting on the couch together and I finally gave in and grabbed his feet, putting them in my lap. Like the moment when I forgot the movie in favor of the feeling of Duo's lips on my collarbone, the weight of his fingers in my hair, his taste on my tongue. Then the moment when everything came into excruciating focus, with Duo straddling my thighs, gasping into my ear.

Our relationship didn't start with a bang, with fireworks and light displays. It happened almost without us noticing, like a house finally settling into its foundations with the passing of time. First we were two, then we were one, and it was the most natural thing in the world.

"You know, it's supposed to be bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding," I said.

"Well, I guess it's good I'm not a bride, yeah?" he replied with a chuckle.

He was sitting in a chair in front of me, the chair turned backwards, his chin resting on the back, fingers tapping out a rhythm on his thighs. I slowly braided his hair as it fell down his back, spread across his tux. It wasn't nearly as long as it had been during the war, but in the past two years it had grown to his mid-back.

Two years since he resurfaced. Six years since he disappeared. People didn't talk much about the war. They were still somewhere between trying to forget and the moment were it would be necessary to remember. Duo and I had spent the last two years together. He finally decided to contact the others too. We were five again, and when we told them we were getting married they had no objections. In fact, after I caught the secret smiles Trowa and Wufei exchanged at our announcement, I had reason to suspect we'd be hearing a similar announcement from them soon enough.

"Duo?" I ventured.

"Mmm?" he opened his eyes to look at my reflection in the mirror in front of us.

"You know," I started, weaving his hair together. "You never really told me why you started growing you hair out again."

He closed his eyes again, and I was beginning to think he wouldn't answer when he spoke up.

"During the war, I used to think that I could smell the filth and garbage of L2 at the very end of my braid. It was the hair I had back then, after all. A little higher was the smell of the furniture polish that we used at the church. After that…smoke, fire. Then the smell of blood and metal, the smell of the war."

I could barely hear him at this point, his voice was so quiet. My fingers stilled momentarily, buried in the weaving.

"I couldn't stand the smell anymore, didn't want to remember. And no matter how much I tried, I couldn't wash it clean. So I just got rid of it."

In the back of my head I could hear Heero's voice. "_I just can't stand the smell anymore, Quatre_."

"And I didn't bother letting it grow after that. There was no scent I really wanted to sink in, nothing I wanted to carry with me."

"But…"

"But then I met you again," he said.

He turned to look at me, not just my reflection this time. A tiny smile was just barely there on his lips, and I could barely get the words past my closed throat, my eyes stinging.

"Why…why didn't you say anything earlier, back then, about how you felt? Why did you…"

"Wait for you to make the first move? I was ready, but you weren't. It took me four years to be ready, and I wanted to give you time."

He stopped then, staring at the floor a while, before suddenly laughing and raising his eyes to me again.

"You know, Quatre, that time after I contacted you again, those two months…you were watching me so hard you never realized I was watching you too."

I was speechless. He retrieved his hair from my leaden hands and finished braiding it, trying it off with practiced efficiency.

We walked together through the back halls of the church, nodding and greeting various friends who were racing to the main congregation hall, trying to get there ahead of us. Finally there was no one but us, waiting for the doors to open.

"Wait!" I blurted, gripping his hand. He looked at me with a wide eyed, what-the-hell-could-you-possibly-have-to-do-now?- look on his face. Letting loose a slow smile, I reached down and began unlacing my shoes. He stood motionless for a moment, before grinning back and without a word bent down to his own shoes and just yanked them off, not bothering with the laces. We frantically pulled off our socks and threw them along with our shoes behind a nearby potted plant. Hearing the Wedding March begin, we rushed back to our places and waited, toes wiggling cheerfully on the hard wood floor. The doors slowly opened, and I turned to Duo, reaching out for his hand once more.

"Let's go," I said.

And he smiled.

The End


End file.
